


i'm on fire and all they want are my ashes

by sayoteel



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-18
Updated: 2015-11-18
Packaged: 2018-05-02 06:15:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5237486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sayoteel/pseuds/sayoteel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>it's 1978 and he wishes he could scare the things that scare him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'm on fire and all they want are my ashes

“You need to learn to mind your words, darling. You’re old enough to know better.”

The sink was running. She had to raise her voice a little to be heard.

She was a star. She was cold and far away and when he looked up at her, he could feel her scorching inside, see the cosmos raging inside her. 

He focused on the birds pecking at the ground outside. 

Everything hurt. 

Boys didn’t cry. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, sounding as if he wasn’t speaking to anyone in particular.  
Just saying it. Just being sorry for the sake of it. He didn’t know what he was sorry for. All he’d done was mimic.

He was playing a part, as far as he was concerned, when he had told his father not to fucking touch him. He had heard them before, those words, and now they were his words and he felt like he had the right to use them. He was acting as if he were big, as if he were brave, and he had looked his father right in the eye and he was not sorry, not even when a fist struck the side of his face.

He was sorry, maybe, for a few hours in the night that proceeded the event and he said so many times to deaf ears and hard hands but now, in the quiet of the kitchen, he didn’t feel sorry. Not one bit. 

“I’m angry,” he said, again as if to nobody in particular. Then quieter, his voice melding with the rush of water from the faucet. “I’m angry and I want him to leave.”

The tap stopped running and anxiety gripped his stomach tightly. He bit his lip. He had made a mistake, he knew.

“What did you say?” She wasn’t looking at him. Her voice was jagged, vinegar.

He pulled at a loose thread on his shirt and his lips moved without him wanting them to. He wished he could rip his traitorous tongue out.

He took a breath. “I said…I’m angry and I want him to leave.” 

Why he had said it aloud, he didn’t know. Maybe it was nice to be noticed by her.

She was walking towards him now, pulling up a chair. She was looking right at him and he felt struck with fear and adoration all at once. Her nails were painted red like blood and she tapped them gently on the glass tabletop, just staring at him with those eyes that mirrored his perfectly. Ice. His heart hurt.

“He’s not going anywhere, Edward. You’re being silly.”

He wanted to break the glass under her hands and gouge out her eyes, gazing at him without any pity, without any sympathy. 

Silly.

He hated her so, and then she squeezed his hand and he felt sick and twisted because he had never loved anybody so much in his whole life.

“He’s your father and you’re being horribly disrespectful. He loves you, you know.”

Bile rose in the back of his throat and he wanted to cry. His father had said the same. Assured Eddie that he was loved. Told him over and over while simultaneously igniting him from the inside out and he wanted to believe it, he really did. He recalled a book he had read in school once and it said that love made you feel beautiful. 

But he didn't feel beautiful. Not even through the kisses and soothing words. He felt ugly. He didn't know many things but he knew love wasn't supposed to hurt like that. 

His mother was still looking at him. Colder now. Displeased with his silence.

He **loves** you. He **cares** about you. He **wants you to be happy**. 

Boys didn't cry.

“You’re wrong,” is what he would whisper if he were bigger and braver but instead he simply nodded. He hoped she was wrong, prayed that she was, but he couldn't be sure. Her hand had pulled away from his and he wanted to reach for it again but he knew it would be a futile effort.

“I’m sorry,” he said again and his voice shook too much. Anger.

A huff. Annoyance. Her lips, red like her nails, pressed together in a thin line. He could almost see her internally rolling her eyes. She didn’t move for a moment.

He wanted to show her the reason why it hurt to sit down and why his hands shook. He wanted her to react for once.  He wanted her to know his pain.

He wanted a supernova, not just a star.

She stood, brushing off his apology. “I have to go pick something up for dinner.”  Not even making eye contact with him, not even giving him the pleasure of being treated like someone who was worth her time. 

How could she be so blind? How could she not see him combusting in front of her? His guts felt too warm, he was overheating in his own skin and she was standing in the hall, ocean eyes on the floor. Ignoring him. Ignoring him while his organs were blistering.

“I’ll be back soon. You should shower before your father comes home.”

Not a suggestion. A statement. Not even a tilt of the head, no vocal inflections. As if he wasn't worth the effort. He turned his gaze back to the birds outside.

Boys didn’t cry. 

He nodded again. The birds were fighting over a piece of soggy bread.

The door opened and closed without him glancing up and he stayed at the table for a while, debating on whether or not he would skip school again to kill rabbits in the woods. He took her advice and showered, checking the lock on the door too many times. 

He took an unnecessarily long time to strip off his clothes, nervous hands, murmuring broken apologies to the bathroom mirror or maybe to God.

He sat crouched in the corner of the shower, feeling the cool tile bite into his bruised back. The water, in contrast, was scalding hot, the way he liked. He wanted it to hurt him so he didn’t have to do it himself.

He wondered if he could drown himself in a bathtub. 

Bad thoughts, festering, oozing acid pus in the back of his head and dripping down his back, running with the water. 

She hated him so much and he didn't know why. 

After all, he’d said he was sorry. 

Minutes passed. His agitation grew.

He was biting his thumb hard, feeling blood well up around the nail, pressing his body further down when he heard the front door slam shut. 

Boys didn't cry. 

He wondered, if he set the water hot enough, if he could melt his skin off and be pulled down the drain androt in the dark sewers forever.  

Loud laughter from the living room, talking. Men’s voices. 

He was burning alive. 

**Author's Note:**

> this was a self para for a thing but i thought it was maybe okay enough to post somewhere else.


End file.
